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St Alban was the first British martyr. Almost nothing about him is known for certain – even the date of his martyrdom is unknown, and historians’ estimates vary between 209 and 314 A.D. (more recent historical research suggests the mid-3rd century).

Alban was a Roman who lived in Verulamium and sheltered a fleeing Christian during a persecution. He was converted, and was executed. Whether the persecution was that of the emperor Diocletian or the emperor Decius – whether Alban pretended to be the fleeing Christian, and so died – whether any of the miraculous circumstances of his martyrdom actually happened – all this is, by now, known only to God.

This does not mean that St Alban did not exist. His cult was already well established by the year 429, and on the hill where tradition said he was martyred, a great abbey grew up which eventually gave its name to the town. Such cults do not appear from nowhere; and the local people conserved in their tradition only what they needed to know – that there had been a martyr there. The fact that legends grew up around him is nothing unusual for the time, and does not cast any doubt on his existence, any more than the legends that gathered round Alexander the Great (who, as “Iskender,” became the hero of many oriental myths that had existed long before his birth) cast any doubt on his existence.

Scholarship has not dealt so kindly with the supposed companion of St Alban, St Amphibalus, who was at one time commemorated on 25th June. The trouble is that his name (derived from the Greek “amphibalos,” a thing thrown around something) means a cloak, and a cloak figures strongly in the later embroideries of St Alban’s story. St Amphibalus has not, therefore, been in the calendar for many centuries now. Science is not immune from this embarrassing phenomenon. In 1992, a letter to the prestigious science magazine “Nature” revealed the unusual biography of a biochemist named Chir, who had papers credited to him and appeared in all the right citation indexes. There turned out to have been a paper published in the 1960s, by [I am inventing the other names] K.J. Smith, M.Chir, and F. Williamson, Ph.D. Unfortunately, M.Chir is simply the abbreviation of the degree “Master of Surgery,” and so the second author of this paper turns out to be just a degree held by the first author!

All we know about Alban is all we need to know: that he was faced unexpectedly with a simple, straightforward decision, and he made the right choice. Easy, we think – obvious what to do – lucky man... except that when we envy him his opportunity, we would do well to remember that it was his entire life and character that were summed up in that single split-second decision. His life (of which we otherwise know nothing) made him the sort of man he was. We may imagine that we would do as he did, given the same chance, but given how idiotically most of us behave when taken by surprise, we may well be wrong. When we pray to be given, like St Alban, a simple opportunity to show what we are made of, we should perhaps add a second prayer – that the first prayer should not be answered.

Veneration of Alban as Protomartyr of Britain depends on a cult of great antiquity at St Alban’s, known during the years of Roman occupation as Verulanium. Bede records in his Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation how, during a persecution by Diocletian, Alban surrendered himself in place of a Christian priest, and so unbaptised by water, attained a baptism of blood. In the same persecution Julius and Aaron, at Caerleon on Usk, are named among others who gave their lives for the faith.

Other saints: The Irish Martyrs

Ireland

Seventeen Irish Martyrs were put to death for the Catholic faith between 1579 and 1654 and were beatified in 1992. They include priests and lay people, men and women. Some were hanged, others were hanged, drawn and quartered. One or two died under torture. See the article in Wikipedia.

About the author of the Second Reading in today's Office of Readings:

Second Reading: St Cyprian (210 - 258)

Cyprian was born in Carthage and spent most of his life in the practice of the law. He was converted to Christianity, and was made bishop of Carthage in 249. He steered the church through troubled times, including the persecution of the emperor Decius, when he went into hiding so as to be able to continue looking after the church. In 258 the persecution of the emperor Valerian began. Cyprian was first exiled and then, on the 14th of September, executed, after a trial notable for the calm and courtesy shown by both sides.

Cyprian’s many letters and treatises shed much light on a formative period in the Church’s history, and are valuable both for their doctrine and for the picture they paint of a group of people in constant peril of their lives but still determined to keep the faith.

Liturgical colour: green

The theological virtue of hope is symbolized by the colour green, just as the burning fire of love is symbolized by red. Green is the colour of growing things, and hope, like them, is always new and always fresh. Liturgically, green is the colour of Ordinary Time, the season in which we are being neither especially penitent (in purple) nor overwhelmingly joyful (in white).

Practise honesty and integrity; rescue the man who has been wronged from the hands of his oppressor; do not exploit the stranger, the orphan, the widow; do no violence; shed no innocent blood in this place.

Is there a poor man among you, one of your brothers, in any town of yours in the land that the Lord your God is giving you? Do not harden your heart or close your hand against that poor brother of yours, but be open-handed with him and lend him enough for his needs.